Heritage School CAD Samples Lego Man

Just thought I'd write a few things about my first school placement which is at Heritage Mathematics and Computing Specialist School in Clowne, Derbyshire.

The D&T department is quite a large one, it has six teachers plus a technician. Each teacher in the department cover specialist areas such as CAD/CAM, Resistant Materials or woodworking and metal work, Electronics, Textiles and Food Tech. Equipment is pretty good for example there are a number of Drills, Lathes, CNC milling machines, Vac Former and Metal workshop with welding equipment etc.

So far project wise I have seen a big focus on CAD but I have yet to see any CAM work being completed. Above is a good example of a Year 8 CAM project which is currently being worked on. The aim of the project is for the students to create their own Lego man in CAD. They create a different part each week and eventually they will be taught how to put these parts together and animate them. The software used is Auto Desk Inventor, which the students seem to know how to use pretty well. The students seem fairly competent and rarely need help from the teacher. If they do so the teacher has the ability through specialist software to view the students screen on the interactive Whiteboard and talk them through a solution.